Statnews - BMJ should retract flawed research paper on chronic fatigue syndrome -STAT - David Tuller Dec 2019

I am almost sorry for Vogt. Actually no, he deserves everything.

I am thinking that the department he trained in must be a crazy quackfest of incompetents thinking they are harnessing the power of the mind to cure devastating illness.
 
strategist said:
I am almost sorry for Vogt. Actually no, he deserves everything.

I am thinking that the department he trained in must be a crazy quackfest of incompetents thinking they are harnessing the power of the mind to cure devastating illness.
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Most of the leadership of the Norwegian medical authorities seem to have fallen for this nonsense. The problem is clearly systemic, not limited to personal failure.

It's going to be a harsh hangover eventually, making it inevitable to ask: who watches the physicians if they fall for this tripe and throw tantrums when told to quit behaving recklessly?
 
Snowdrop said:
Am I seeing bogey-men where there are none?
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No, you are not.

The problem is not the lack of real bogey-men (and women). It is the excess of them. They have flooded the debate and medical profession.
Barry said:
I very much doubt there are any more. But modern communications has made it easier for them to collaborate, whilst also making it easier to expose them.
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It is a double edged sword. We certainly could not have achieved what we have so far without the internet.

My real concern is that as we move to more authoritarian societies and governments (which we seem to be doing the world over), the internet will start being heavily censored and the likes of Wessely will be happy to enable it to prevent his critics & victims having their say.

Happy to be proven wrong on that, Sir Simon.
strategist said:
I am almost sorry for Vogt. Actually no, he deserves everything.
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Yep. He did it entirely to himself, against all warnings, and richly deserves the reputational & professional fate coming his way.

Same for the Norwegian medical system that let him and these ideas survive and prosper.
 
Heartening to see this excellent piece on STAT. Thank you, David.

Hopefully all the excellent comments will encourage STAT to continue to pay attention to this topic.

_______

Godlee: ""“In my view, readers and guideline bodies are now equipped to reach their own conclusions on the quality of the evidence in support of this therapy.”""

Crappy to see that BMJ is willing to take about as much editorial responsibility as Facebook, when push comes to shove.
 
strategist said:
I am almost sorry for Vogt. Actually no, he deserves everything.

I am thinking that the department he trained in must be a crazy quackfest of incompetents thinking they are harnessing the power of the mind to cure devastating illness.
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Vogt strikes me as being a (relatively) big fish in a very, very small pond. And, lets face it, BPS/psychosomatic departments are very shallow, small ponds indeed.

When we leave our small ponds for the first time most of us question whether we might not be as smart as we once thought we were, but Vogt appears to be completely oblivious.

He seemed genuinely baffled in the comments on a blog post elsewhere after people laughed at him when he claimed that an anecdote of a LP success story on Youtube was sound scientific evidence of the LP's efficacy.
 
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In my view, readers and guideline bodies are now equipped to reach their own conclusions on the quality of the evidence in support of this therapy
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Could this be the statement of someone who has been pressured into keeping the paper but thinks that anyone reading it as it stands now will see what rubbish it is?
 
Art Vandelay said:
Vogt strikes me as being a (relatively) big fish in a very, very small pond. And, lets face it, BPS/psychosomatic departments are very shallow, small ponds indeed.

When we leave our small ponds for the first time most of us question whether we might not be as smart as we once thought we were, but Vogt appears to be completely oblivious.

He seemed genuinely baffled in the comments on a blog post elsewhere after people laughed at him when he claimed that an anecdote of a LP success story on Youtube was sound scientific evidence of the LP's efficacy.
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Uh. Good point. The embrace of LP by Norwegian medical authorities must be very confusing. It's blatant quackery but to anyone who trusts their training and the system they work in, it's a hard conflict to reconcile. How can so many smart people in a position of authority be so wrong? You'd have to be a medical historian with deep knowledge of how this happened many times in the past to know better. Oops.

Which seems to make the point Vogt is as bad a medical historian as he is a physician. It happens in every profession, some people make it through training but are just bad at it. The absence of a proper feedback mechanism makes it particularly problematic in medicine.
 
Mithriel said:
In my view, readers and guideline bodies are now equipped to reach their own conclusions on the quality of the evidence in support of this therapy.
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Could this be the statement of someone who has been pressured into keeping the paper but thinks that anyone reading it as it stands now will see what rubbish it is?
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That is my view.

For somebody to have the power to effectively silence and neutralise the chief editor of the BMJ on such blatant psuedo-science is a very revealing and disturbing insight into what we are really up against.

As I have been saying for years, this goes way past just us and this little corner of medicine. There is something far bigger in play and at stake here. We are just the early victims of it all, the experimental guinea pigs.

Oh what fun.
 
Sean said:
That is my view.

For somebody to have the power to effectively silence and neutralise the chief editor of the BMJ on such blatant psuedo-science is a very revealing and disturbing insight into what we are really up against.

As I have been saying for years, this goes way past just us and this little corner of medicine. There is something far bigger in play and at stake here. We are just the early victims of it all, the experimental guinea pigs.

Oh what fun.
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The Lightning Process Study ought to be the reductio ad absurdum (reducing to an absurdity) of the BPS methodology that underpins not only PACE, but vast amounts of psychological research including on CBT in general and the entire concept of MUS.

If this methodology can apparently demonstrate as effective an obvious quack pseudoscience intervention, there must be something very wrong with this methodology, which a lot of people with ME have been trying to point out for some years. There are lots of careers, from researchers to clinicians to health planners, based on this very shaky edifice.

I suspect that we do not have anywhere enough evidence to argue that this failure to address the obviously flawed represents a deliberate conspiracy, rather it is equally possible that unquestioning deference to eminent researchers and a short sighted reluctance to risk repetitional damage makes accepting the status quo the easiest option. This is relevant to much more than just the field of ME/CFS, meaning the weight of the establishment so far is on the side of denying any problems exist.

So we need to continue to push, to make addressing the issues, not denial, the least difficult option.

[Added - I do think we have some evidence that a handful of individual researchers are deliberately plotting to discredit their critics and are willing to distort facts to protect themselves, but we can not so far say that the wider scientific community including journal editors are intentionally participating either reluctantly or willingly in a conspiracy.]
 
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Without getting into another area of controversy, after the Kennedy assassination there was not a great conspiracy to silence the critics, it was all done in a quiet, individual manner that actually made it more effective as there was nothing much to point to.

Owners of newspapers had quiet words with editors who had quiet words with journalists who had to make a choice between dropping their article or losing their job with little chance of getting another when another quiet word was put out about them.

The FBI had long had a tradition where agents had to keep Hoover happy or they were out and they followed his directions without question.

Just little nudges everywhere that only the bravest stood up to but when they were destroyed it made everyone else less likely to say anything.

The quiet word that Bristol had with Dave Tuller's bosses was in this long tradition.

No one cares enough about us to become a martyr for our cause.
 
On Friday, STAT posted my opinion piece about BMJ and the Lightning Process paper–in particular, about BMJ’s decision not to retract the paper despite the multiple documented violations of core ethical and methodological principles of medical research. That anti-scientific decision is potentially harmful not only to children suffering from a stigmatizing illness but ultimately to the reputations of BMJ and Dr Godlee as well.

STAT is an excellent, Boston-based, online reporting operation that examines the nuts-and-bolts of research and policy in health care and medicine. It is widely read and widely respected. STAT has published previous pieces on the illness in question, including this on the downfall of PACE (by Julie Rehmeyer), this on the CDC’s decision to drop its CBT/GET recommendations (by Julie Rehmeyer and me), and this on an insurance decision in a patients’ favor (by Steven Lubet and me).
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http://www.virology.ws/2019/12/16/trial-by-error-my-stat-opinion-piece-on-bmj-and-dr-godlee/
 
I thought this article was great.

It's always frustrating that no single article could fully outline the problems with Crawley's work, or the BMJ's response to the concerns of CFS patients, but I thought this did a really good job of explaining things in a way that the general public could follow, and would have them recognise that there are serious problems here.
 
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